The rise of e-commerce is forcing Retailers to evolve

Landlords adapt to counter rise of online retailers (FT)

• Given the rise of online retailers, retail landlords have adapted shopping malls to cater to changing trends.
• More have replaced retail stores with food and beverage brands.
• In addition, more are considering alternative uses of redundant space with residential and commercial property such as hotels. PREIT, for example, plans to add as many as 7,000 homes and 3,000 hotel rooms across a dozen of their properties.

Analysis and Comments

• With online sales expected to grow from c. 10% of the global retail market to over 17% by 2022, you would expect stories like this about the demise of physical retail
• Despite the doom & gloom shops still have a role in retail, with a high percentage of transactions still having a physical element, even if the actual purchase is made online.
• The FT story talks most about repurposing of retail space, the flip side of this is the need to better integrate physical retail into the purchase journey.
• This will need material investment, both in terms of front-end customer engagement & inspiration (so influencer marketing, data mining, augmented reality etc) and back end supply chain.

23% of ecommerce in Europe is cross-border (Ecommerce news)

• A recent report from Cross Border Commerce Europe identified that the cross border online sales totalled c. E95bn, giving an online market share of c. 23%.
• If travel related spending is included, the total rises to E137bn.
• Of the total, 55% was purchases from EU retailers, suggesting that a massive E43bn of sales per by retailers located outside of Europe – with the bulk coming from online market places such as Amazon.
• Cross border online sales grew 13.2% yoy.

Analysis and Comments

• For us the most interesting statistic from this report was that the UK is the largest generator of online cross border sales – by a significant  margin (E165bn).
• Germany (E98bn) & France (E84bn) were next, with all other markets being much smaller.
• It is forecast that cross border online sales will double out to 2022, rising to c. E245bn.
• What is not clear is what impact Brexit will have (if/when it happens & in what form).